


How To Commit a Murder

by spirograph



Category: South Park
Genre: Blood, Drug Use, M/M, Murder, Non-Consensual Drug Use, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-08
Updated: 2007-03-08
Packaged: 2017-10-31 11:54:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spirograph/pseuds/spirograph





	How To Commit a Murder

Something happens to Kyle in the 9th grade. He stops caring and then he stops eating, his marks get low and his hair stops getting brushed. Underneath his clothes there are bruises from where he forgot to stop walking, where he wandered right into the frame of a door and honestly forgot to feel the pain. He tells his parents he’s an atheist, that he’s a vegan. He tells anyone who will listen that he doesn’t believe in God. Nobody asks why, but if they did he would tell them it’s because Kenny died in his arms. Because Kenny bled out all over his clothes with an open wound to the chest and Kyle could see the thin bones of his ribs poking out through his skin. He would tell them, with his voice hushed and guarded, that he had slipped his hand inside of Kenny’s bloodied injury after he’d passed out from the agony. He would say, voice trembling, that when he felt Kenny’s heart slowly beating against his fingertips the entire universe fell down around him. 

Kyle would say that he fell in love.

~*~ 

South Park is hell, with its bright lights and inviting signs of welcome in the shop front windows. On the outside the pleasantries streaming from their mouths conceal from tourists and passers-through the fact that South Park isn’t at all what it seems. As clumps of snow fall from the borderline pines and make pretty the blizzard whirling through the backstreets and the basements, the living rooms and the hallway staircases, there is something growing underneath the streets, below the cracked pavement and the layers of crunching sleet beneath their boots. 

Painted and fixed up, shiny new interiors cover years of peeling, discolored wallpaper and yellowed marks made by cigarette smoke and the thick smog of sin that always lingers just below the surface of everything they do. In a few years, it will all have to be redone again - the build up and the residue of everyday life will be too thick to ignore. 

Just driving through a stranger can’t know the truth. They can’t know the fact that Randy Marsh has been fucking Kyle’s dad since before anyone can remember, that it’s never really been a secret (it’s a known truth that can be reaffirmed at PTA meetings that are really just drunken orgies in disguise.)

Simply walking the streets they can’t know about the crazy scientist hidden up in the mountains, banned from the rest of the scientific community for unethical experimentation on defenseless woodland critters. It’s not odd to see disfigured animals on the outskirts of the snow covered forest, their mangled flesh barely holding taut on their wiry frames before they reach the highway and come face to face with the kind of life conclusion only the zigzags of high speed tires can bring. But it’s just ordinary road kill to the people who don’t know. 

Kyle knows, though. He feels it like a heavy weight pressing against him from all sides; all of the wrong they have done and the wrong they have yet to do. Like a thin layer of gray dust, he imagines it settles on his exposed flesh and sinks down through his skin, getting into his blood stream like a cancer. This is his home: he loves it, and he hates it. He wishes they could stay this way forever and sometimes, god, he just wishes he could just die. 

~*~

Its senior year and Kenny kills himself on a Tuesday, then again on the following Friday. Stan finds him the first time, Cartman the next. It’s happened before, of course. Kyle hears all of the details second hand because he stopped going to Kenny’s house ages ago - after he sliced his wrists open with a pink Schick razor and bled out all over two months worth of a group assignment that was due the next day. Kyle wonders what kind of person it makes him given that he cared more about his school work than his best friend taking his own life. He doesn’t know why he bothers trying to analyze it; that assignment took fucking forever and it all got ruined; Kenny came back the next day. 

Typically there’s no explanation for why he did it, why he swallowed poison, why he sliced at his paper-thin skin with serrated blades. There never is, and Cartman supposes ‘he was bored’ while Stan whispers, “I think he wants it to be over. For good, you know?” The ache in Kyle’s chest tells him it will never be over. 

In class Wendy wears tacky golden earrings in the shape of Christmas bells that jingle when she moves. They keep catching Kyle’s eye, tiny red bows like bloodstains against her skin. Kenny stumbles in late, disheveled and with snow in his hair. High on Kenny’s cheekbone is a smudge of mud and Kyle’s heart beats out of time. The teacher pretends to care but her voice sounds strained when she demands that Kenny sit right down and open his math book at page twelve – as if Kenny has any of the text books in his broken school bag; as if he would waste his hard saved cash on them. 

Kenny edges his desk nearer to Kyle’s and reads over his shoulder, leaning in close and squinting slightly at the equations listed across the page. He smells like pavement and dirt, like washing powder and mixed-bag candy. Using the top of Kyle’s thigh Kenny steadies himself against his tipping chair, fingers digging in slightly through the fabric of Kyle’s jeans. _“Dude,”_ Kyle whispers, but Kenny doesn’t move away, just looks up at him with a grin full of candy-red stained teeth. 

At lunchtime Cartman puts his feet up on the table, crosses his ankles and says, conversationally, around a mouthful of meat surprise, “I’m fucking sick of getting your blood on my shoes.” Kenny flips him off and Stan laughs into his chocolate milk. Kyle stares at the reddish brown dried into the grooves of Cartman’s boots but doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t say much of anything, anymore. 

There’s something about Kenny’s existence that has thrown their entire generation out of sync with the rest of the school. He sits right in the center of them all at the long, rectangular cafeteria table and doesn’t even have to speak a word to be revered. Their year isn’t segregated anymore like the rest of the students: the Goths are sitting with the bullies who are sitting with the geeks who are scanning the pages of their sci-fi and fantasy books. They insult each other all the time, sure, but it doesn’t mean much: on the weekends they all wind up at the same house to get fucked up on whatever they can find. The teachers watch them from the sidelines as if they’re suspicious, as if they’re scared. 

Wendy flops down into the seat next to Stan and repositions her headband, her thick, eggplant purple eye shadow clashing with the enormous dark rings beneath her eyes. “The parental units are away next weekend,” she says, sniffing and rubbing at her nose, “party at my place on Saturday.” Everybody buzzes with excitement as the information is passed from person to person along the table. 

Kyle can picture the scene in his head: Bebe’s shirt up over her head and Token bouncing all over the sofa playing air guitar. He wonders if Jimmy will get drunk and fall down the stairs again, if he’ll walk in on Henrietta and Derek going at it like he did last week. He shudders, scooping up another spoonful of veggie-surprise, forcing it to slide, thick and lumpy, down his throat. 

~*~

There’s a fog that hangs over South Park, a blanket of filth that gets heavier every day. Kyle blames it on the adults; he blames it on the 4th grade. He doesn’t suppose any of them have really learned anything since they were eight, because that’s when all that crazy shit happened. It turned their whole world upside down. Kids in the years below were small enough that all of what happened seems like a dream, maybe something they made up in their heads. The adults dig their heels into the snow and disappear successfully inside their denial. The good ones do, anyway: the ones who actually have any moral fiber left in their bones. No one talks about Kenny, not in public. He’s like a stain, something leftover that constantly reminds them all of the past. 

Kyle’s pretty sure they only come to school these days because it’s something to do, because it’s better than sitting around at home waiting for something to happen. Nothing happens anymore, though, not like it used to. They have to create their own drama now. 

He accidentally walks into the girls bathroom during third period on a Wednesday, too busy thinking about P.E class, about Kenny climbing the one lousy rope in the gym, wrapping his legs around it and his t-shirt sliding, sliding, sliding higher. Wendy’s standing over the counter with one finger pushing her left nostril flat, long line of white powder spread out in front of her. “Hey Kyle,” she says, smiling, “Want some?” 

Bebe giggles from where she’s sitting in one of the cubicles, holding onto the door and swaying because she hasn’t put the toilet seat down and she’s about to fall inside. Kyle doesn’t reply, he walks away to the sound of them laughing and the splash of what he assumes is Bebe’s ass hitting the water. Wendy used to be the intelligent one, before the  
Naïve theory that her smartness might actually mean something in a town like this disappeared, and she realized there wasn’t any point in trying to be good. Now she’s so strung out on drugs that she probably doesn’t even remember what being good felt like.

Back in class Kenny’s drawing doodles on some paper he stole from Tommy’s desk. As Kyle approaches Tommy whispers, “give it back, fuckface,” making a grab for the pen in Kenny’s hand. When he frowns Kyle can easily make out the scar across his face, bumpy ridges from where the electric sander tore up his flesh. That’s all they have now: subtle reminders that bleed into vague and gruesome memories.

Kyle turns to the front of class and picks up his pen, squinting to try and make out the cursive scrawl on the blackboard. There’s the sharp pain of a finger jabbing at his back and a folded piece of paper falls onto the desk in front of him. It’s a crude drawing of their teacher with a turd on her head, flies buzzing round her and Kenny lying dead on the ground by her feet. Kyle quickly scribbles _it’s an improvement_ above the circling insects and throws it back over his shoulder. Beside him, a screwed up ball of paper hits Craig on the back of the head. He twists around angrily, _“What?”_

“Swap seats?” Kenny whispers, motioning between their tables with his hand. Craig sighs and picks up his stuff, awkwardly depositing it on Kenny’s desk. A moment later Kenny’s sliding into the chair next to Kyle, slouching so his jeans ride impossibly low, belt pulled taut over his hips. 

“This isn’t musical chairs, Mr. McCormick,” is the croaked protest from the front of the class and a couple of students laugh, weakly. “Sorry,” Kenny mumbles, but he’s so not, lowering his head against the graffitied wood of the desktop and making a face. 

Kyle shakes his head and Kenny holds his gaze, gobstopper-red tongue swiping out across his bottom lip. It’s only then that Kyle notices Kenny’s hair - shaggy, dirty blonde twisted into thin horns on his head. Quickly, Kyle turns back to his book, the words on his page blurring out of focus. Once he knows their teacher isn’t looking he leans sideways and whispers, “Nice hair.” Kenny grins down at his own hands, scraping PVA glue from his fingers and rolling it into lumps, flicking the globules away toward the front of the class where Stan has his head resting on his forearms, mouth open as he sleeps. 

~*~

Everybody thinks Kyle is going to become a doctor. _You’re so smart,_ they say. They don’t know that he’s always kind of been one, always patching up a botched job with rudimentary tools and a faltering sense of hope. He wonders what they’d say if they knew. They tell him, _you’d save lives,_ and he imagines the surgeries, all of them going horribly wrong. He’d start and he’d never stop. Kyle’s compulsive and he’d want to pull his patients apart like a puzzle, the pieces all laid out on the gurney beside him just to make sure they were all built the same way. No, Kyle won’t become a doctor. 

He visits the hospital all the time, though, even when Kenny isn’t dead or dying. South Park is so small, so uncaring, they usually don’t bother to lock any of the supply cupboard doors. Inside his backpack he hides the usual: scalpels, gloves and gauze. A few needles (with barrels that clink together gently when he holds them in his hand) and maybe some of those nicely packaged antibacterial wipes. He won’t be greedy and take another retractor, but maybe he’ll grab a box of those quick absorbing sutures, just in case. 

Years of hanging out with Cartman have taught Kyle how to talk himself out of sticky situations. “I can’t find Kenny, I thought he might be here,” he tells the nurses when they find him wandering the silent, empty hallways. They always fall for his wide, worried eyes and the look of faux-relief when they say, “Oh, no, he’s not here today, dear.” They let him walk right out the door - bag rattling - and never suspect a thing. 

Kyle devises a plan which is mostly foolproof when he’s thinking about it drunk. It’s such a beautiful idea, so simple, and he thinks about it most days at school, chin resting against his hand while he scribbles coded notes to himself at the corner of his schoolbook pages. Kenny’s heart is the key to all of it. When it stops beating the world stops turning. Kyle swears that he feels the earth shuddering when Kenny’s final breath drifts out over his lips; he can see the leaves on the trees shaking in slow motion when Kenny’s pulse fades into nothing. 

Kyle knows what he has to do. He will fix Kenny and everything will change; Kenny won’t die and Kyle can sleep again at night. Just before summer began he raided the school supply cupboard and stole some bubble wrap which is now carefully folded and hidden in his dresser drawer. If he could just wrap it around Kenny’s heart, maybe secure it with surgical tape so that it can’t ever slip out of place. Everything would be different, then. 

_So simple_ , he thinks, pulling the new supplies out of his backpack and laying them side by side on top of his desk. Kyle doesn’t think about the reason why Kenny always dies, why he always comes back. Kyle has spent far too many years theorizing, trying to explain it. Now, finally, it’s time to act. The night creeps in through his window and starts to cast dark shadows all around the bedroom, following Kyle’s movements as he reaches for a book off his full-to-bursting shelf. A worn bookmark falls onto Kyle’s lap as he cracks the book open and he smiles, red marks on the pages glinting up at him in the lamplight.

~*~

Kyle watches Craig and Tweek beat the breath from each other in an empty classroom, blood pouring from Tweek’s nose because Craig’s on almost every sports team South Park has to offer and there’s just that much more strength behind his fist. He watches because it’s free period and there isn’t much else to do. He watches because he had a part in starting it, their own little Fight Club that’s only ever consisted of two members. Tweek falls against a desk, keens sideways and tips over a chair; Craig kneels, takes Tweek’s face between his hands. There’s an affection behind it all that makes Kyle feel overwhelmingly jealous. He doesn’t know what they are to each other, how deep those feelings they have truly run. All he knows is that they probably have the most solid relationship in town. They look perfect together and Kyle wonders how they all managed to skip the awkward, dorky-looking teenager thing and go straight to angular jaw lines and perfect hair falling down over clear, blemish-free skin. _Maybe it’s something in the water,_ Kyle thinks, melted snow from the mountains pouring down into the water supply, tainted with the promise of a beauty that is powerful enough to cover up the true ugliness of the lives they lead. Maybe they’re blessed. No, Kyle doesn’t believe that at all. The townsfolk only go to church now because they don’t believe in anything, because they’re terrified that no one’s going to save them from their fate. Christianity is the safest bet this month. 

Stan’s where he usually hides: behind the stationary supplies in the second floor staff cupboard. They figured out the trick to picking the lock when they were juniors and if the teachers ever realized they never bothered to say. The tiny rectangular window near the back is open and Stan’s holding a cigarette above his head so the smoke drifts out. The room still smells, however, he’s been using it long enough that the odor clings to every disused cardboard box and every sheet of yellowed cartridge paper scattered on the floor. 

Kyle watches him for a while, inhaling, exhaling, and staring blankly at the opposite wall with an expression on his face like he’s bored with it, like this routine is truly wearing thin. He knows Kyle is there but he doesn’t speak, not until the butt of his smoke is hissing out in the inch of liquid left in the drink bottle by his feet. “You’re such a fucking voyeur,” Stan says simply, and the words are old, reused a hundred times over. 

Kyle shrugs and he’s got Stan pinned to the wall a moment later, hands sneaking beneath his t-shirt and gripping his hips hard enough to bruise. _You’re not just a second choice,_ Kyle wants to say. He almost believes it. 

Stan tries to twist away, says, “Dude, I’m not a fag,” but his heart just isn’t in the rejection anymore, his breath catching when Kyle tugs his earlobe in between his teeth. 

Kyle can hear the snarl in his own voice when he whispers back, “Do you really think I give a shit?”, because he doesn’t and Stan should know that better than anybody else by now. He jerks Stan off quickly and roughly, savoring the small, needy sounds he makes when he comes, the way his knees buckle like he might collapse. 

“You stink like a fucking ashtray,” he says afterwards, Stan panting against his shoulder. Kyle reaches into his pocket and grabs a stick of gum, shoves it into Stan’s open mouth. The reply is a muffled _Thanks_ through determined chews and a slight rasping of breath. They don’t really talk anymore, don’t share their hopes or dreams; for the most part Kyle figures they don’t have any of those left. 

Stan stares at him for a bit, slowly chewing his gum. “Do you like doing that?” he says, reaching out and tugging Kyle’s wrinkled shirt back into place. 

Kyle considers the question but he doesn’t know how to gage it. He knows that when he gets home, once he’s in bed trying (and failing) to sleep, he’ll remember this and the need to touch Stan will become unbearable. Right now though, he doesn’t really feel a thing. “Yeah, I guess,” he shrugs, staring unsubtly at the triangle of chest bared by Stan’s unbuttoned shirt. 

The school bell rings for lunch. 

“I have to go see Mr. Mackey over at the Elementary,” Stan says, picking his bag up off the floor and swinging it over his shoulder. Kyle doesn’t ask why, just watches as Stan shuffles his way around the littered stationary and disappears out through the door. 

 

~*~

Beneath a mound of blankets high enough to topple, Kyle curls into a ball and feels the air get too hot and thick to breathe. He wonders if he can suffocate himself like this, safe inside a cocoon of pilling wool and quilted squares. Downstairs his mother laughs at the television and in the next room Ike is listening to his stereo as loud as it will go. Outside the sun is shining but the curtains are drawn to block it out. 

The bedroom door is locked and no one will bother calling him down for dinner. He’ll wait until everyone’s asleep and creep to the fridge, help himself to whatever’s left. Maybe Kenny will knock gently on the back door at 2am, fish the key out from under the muddy welcome mat and let himself in. He’ll meet Kyle sitting on the kitchen counter, spooning potato into his mouth right from a large serving bowl. With the same spoon Kenny will help himself. They’ll share it but they won’t say a word, and it will be like every other late night conversation they’ve ever had. The silence means more to Kyle than anything his friends have ever spoken aloud and with Kenny standing beside him, jacketed arm resting against Kyle’s thigh, maybe he’ll tell the truth. 

Choking on the stale air he lets himself out of his cocoon. The ceiling’s perfect cream paint glares down at him, mocking his pain. Kyle hates Kenny so badly, hates him for not noticing. He swears it must be written all over his face, _I love you I love you I love you_. But maybe even if it were he still wouldn’t see. The sunset pours orange through the curtains; it’s fading fast. Kyle buries his head beneath the blankets again and holds his breath. Counting to fifty, he wills his heart to stop beating, if only for a moment. Long enough to forget all the things that he wants, all the things that he doesn’t have. Kenny’s face is painted there behind his lids, smiling at him through the furred shield of his parka. Behind him the world is orange and pink - a winter skyscape - and Kyle feels like he’s falling, falling headfirst into the sun. 

~*~

Kyle sits on his school desk with an old copy of Henry Gray’s _Anatomy of the Human Body_ open on his lap. Tapping his pen in a static rhythm on his thigh he traces the outline of every single student in the class with his eyes. Humming softly under his breath as they talk amongst themselves: 

_The leg bone’s connected to the  
Knee-bone,  
and the knee bone’s connected to the  
Thigh-bone,  
and the thigh bone’s connected to the  
Hip-bone…_

Playing connect the dots through their clothing. When he looks at his friends he sees them as bones, bright white and glowing beneath the thin layer of skin that protects them. If Kyle had a super power, it would be x-ray vision. He would lay Kenny down, watch his joints extend and flex. Once, he held Kenny’s wrist between his fingers and felt the movement of bone grinding against bone, he squeezed hard enough that it hurt, he knew, because Kenny gasped, but he didn’t pull away. 

When Kenny dies they pull the sheet up to cover his face and Kyle likes the way the fabric falls over his frame, like a bird buried beneath the soil, hidden, nothing left but the delicate framework of its bones. It’s cold in the morgue, and the lights are so bright: fluorescents humming into the stillness. Kyle would never tell anybody but he likes it there. It’s so quiet, and when he speaks it’s as if the silence swallows up his words. He tells Kenny everything, then, when they’re alone and Kenny doesn’t breathe. In loud places, like the classroom, Kyle pretends he’s sitting there, bathed in the reflected green of the walls and falling into the quiet. 

Kenny claps his hands on the other side of the room, does a dance for their classmates and they laugh. Kyle watches his skeleton move, bone against bone against bone against bone until he’s blinded by the shine of Kenny’s teeth, stark white punctuated by the soft pink of his lips. “Earth to Kyle,” he says, “I know you’ve got not rhythm, you can’t help being Jewish.” Kenny holds out his hand, stretches out his fingers, tendons on his knuckles flexing under his skin, “Wanna dance?”

Kyle shakes his head, “Nah, its okay. I’ve gotta find Stan.” Kenny doesn’t look too upset, he grabs hold of Bebe’s hand and twirls her in a circle, grinning while their classmates laugh and laugh and laugh. Kyle can hear their laughter echoing around him as he climbs the nearby stairs, two at a time, away from Kenny’s perfect bones as fast as his legs will carry him. 

~*~

The first time Kyle kills anybody it’s a Tuesday. He grabs his fake ID, sneaks out of his house and drives his mother’s pickup to the middle of nowhere.

In a bar full of drunken bikers and clichéd slutty housewives he meets some kid – blonde, attractive and a runaway - who isn’t much older than himself. He rambles on about his deadbeat family, how they disowned him when they found out he liked guys. Kyle suggests they’ll probably get over it; the kid says they’re hardcore religious and they’d probably try and crucify him if he ever went home. The kid goes for a bathroom break and Kyle drugs his drink. It gets late, and Kyle gets bored, he has a plan but it’s not much good when he’s sitting on his butt in a bar full of rednecks. “Want to go for a drive?” he asks, and the kid glances around, looks down at his meager bag of belongings and grins, sculling the last of his beer, “Sure.” 

They drive for miles and end up in the middle of a field that isn’t coated in snow but is full of sharp grass that pokes through the blanket that Kyle throws down, scratches at his back as they make out. Kyle doesn’t know where they are, he’s doesn’t even care. There are hands on his hips; lips, teeth and fingertips making his whole body come alive. Beneath the surface of his skin he can feel his veins throbbing, blood pulsing. 

One arm behind his head he watches the sky over the kids shoulder; stars winking down at him from behind transparent wisps of nighttime cloud. The world goes still when Kyle stabs him, quickly and with a cheap knife that he picked up at the dollar store a few months back; one sharp motion, the knife held sideways so it slips between his ribs and punctures his lung. Kyle’s practiced it so many times in his head, but doing it is totally different. The kid grabs onto Kyle’s shoulders, nails digging into his skin, and for a moment Kyle wonders if he should just let him live. The kid screams soundlessly for help. “There’s not much point,” Kyle says honestly, and he wants to say sorry, not for the life that he’s taking but because he doesn’t care.

“You look so much like him,” he whispers, instead, voice shaking with adrenaline as pushes the other boy onto his back, just before he twists the knife in far enough to douse the last glimmer of light left in his eyes. For a while Kyle watches the blood soak through the boys clothing, stares toward the horizon as the night sky swallows the landscape whole. Living surrounded by death has left Kyle numb and this kid, whoever he was, will never take another breath or see another sunset and it’s because of him; his hungry, angry hands and his empty conscience. Kyle grabs a lamp from the back of the pickup and tells himself he’s doing this because he loves Kenny more than anything else in the whole world. Because he’s trying to make a difference; trying to save a life. 

Inside Kyle’s bag are all of the tools that he needs. The scalpel makes a sharp, swift incision along the sternum. After that the boy’s ribs crack apart and the retractor winds open with ease. It’s almost exactly the way he’d imagined. That first time, though, Kyle is clumsy and it’s so messy and. _“Oh my god,”_ there’s so much fucking blood. The corner edge of a bubble wrap square hangs out of his bag and waves at him in the slight breeze. There’s already so much wrong with what he’s done that he doesn’t bother to try and follow through with the entire plan. He’ll get it right next time, though. 

There’s a muddy tarpaulin in the boot of the car, concealing an assortment of metal weights, which he rolls the body up in. He turns the headlights on and sprays bleach all over the patch of grass where they’d been lying just as it starts to rain. He drives with the lights off but not a single car passes by. He turns the stereo up until it feels like his eardrums are going to burst. 

He rows the communal dingy out onto Starks Pond and once the weights are tied on tight the body slides easily into the murky water. Kyle watches as it sinks deeper, deeper, into the darkness. The forecast had told him earlier to prepare for snow, for a week of extra layers and woolen pom-pom hats; for a cold snap that would freeze the surface of the pond. By the time the kid’s body is found there will be no trace of Kyle. Anything enough to convict him will have been destroyed or washed away. He dumps the carcass of some fresh road kill inside the dingy to explain the blood and sighs. It’s somewhat sad when he realizes that killing the blonde hasn’t stopped the gnawing ache in his chest at all, hasn’t made him feel as if he’s making progress. He wonders how he ever thought that it would be a good idea at all. 

He feels vaguely ill, walking back to the car with blood on his clothes and his red stained hands hanging limp at his sides. It’s not because of what he’s done, or what he hasn’t managed to achieve, but because it was so damn _easy._ He throws up in a dumpster beside a freshly painted park bench, bile burning his throat, and then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He thinks of Kenny.

In the shower, watching the last traces of blood disappear down the drain, Kyle feels infuriatingly trapped, like a boy sized fly in a town sized web. Kenny’s the spider and Kyle fucking hates him even more than he did before. Kyle wants and he wants and he feels as if he’s going to fall apart at the seams, tongue following the ridge along the inside of his cheek. 

Kenny is his best friend and his biggest weakness, and now there’s some lonely kid without a home lying cold at the bottom of their pond. For a while Kyle cries but he doesn’t feel sad, he just feels empty, like the part of him that made his life real has vanished; like he’s just a hollow shell searching hopelessly for a way to make himself feel whole. 

~*~

Kyle skips school on a Wednesday and steals two of his mother’s valium out of her secret sock-drawer stash, swallows them with a large glassful of juice. He lays down on his bed and runs his fingers over the protruding outline of his ribs, pressing firmly into the spaces between the fourth and fifth. Further down, where they come to an end, he can almost hook his entire hand underneath them like they’re handlebars. Much to his mothers horror he’s still on the too-skinny side of thin (even though he eats twice as much as anyone else in their house) and he can easily count his rib bones when the flesh is pulled taut across them. Kyle can’t sleep naturally anymore. He can’t do anything but lay claim to his own body and pretend his hands belong to someone else. The Diazepam helps, in a way. One, two, three… fingers drifting down over the slight concave of his stomach, over the jutting points of his hip bones. He can feel his muscles relaxing beneath the tingling shell of his skin; can hear the world slowing down, just for him, as his eyes start to drift shut. It’s nice there, on the edge of oblivion. He wishes it could last a bit longer. 

He wakes up suddenly with Stan’s face hovering above him, dark afternoon shadows dancing all over the walls. “The door is locked,” Kyle says softly, his body numb and unresponsive when he tries to move. His bed is warm. He really didn’t want to wake up so soon.

“I climbed through the window.” Stan says, smiling. Kyle’s lids fall closed again and the mattress gives a little, his body sinking further down into it. Stan’s breath tickles at the hairs on his arm, “Have you been taking your moms crazy pills again?” He rests his hand on Kyle’s bare stomach. 

Kyle feels himself flinch. “Are you really even here?” he whispers, not daring to open his eyes. He’s probably hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first time. 

“Uh, I think so. No, I’m pretty sure. Yeah. I bashed my knee against that damned trellis on the side of your house. Actually, I think I’m bleeding.” Stan’s voice echoes around the small room, off the white walls that haven’t got any posters on them, just the leftover splotches of blu-tak that are slowly losing their stick. Kyle’s body temperature is rising, sensitive nerve endings zinging where Stan’s knee is almost touching him. All he’s doing is sitting on the bed, and that’s enough. How is that enough? Kyle can feel himself slipping. 

Stan’s hand gets heavier on Kyle’s abdomen and the mattress slopes down slightly. His tongue almost burns where it touches Kyle’s skin, trailing all over his stomach and plunging briefly into the dip of his bellybutton. 

Kyle gasps and peeks out through his eyelashes, gazing down to where Stan’s resting his chin lightly against the curve of his hip. His voice cracks, “What’re you doing?”

“Trying to wake you up? Is it working?” Kyle nods as well as he can manage, attempting to bring his hand up to rest on Stan’s shoulder. Instead it falls short and lands on the bedspread. Stan grins, “So, you wanna see a movie?” Kyle nods but he’d really rather fuck Stan into the mattress. But they’ve never done that before so he should wait. He should wait, and wait forever because Stan isn’t like that. He forces himself up into a sitting position and his arms finally obey, jerking out and grabbing Stan by the arm, by the side of his face, pulling him forward so they can kiss. He’s still groggy from sleep, from the pills, and it feels like he’s tumbling wetly, awkwardly into Stan’s mouth. The world is spinning and all of the blood in his body is rushing to his dick, his heart beating faster, faster, faster. Stan moans and it vibrates through Kyle’s skull, his hands resting delicately on Kyle’s thighs. 

When Kyle pulls back, Stan sucks his bottom lip into his mouth, stares at him without blinking, “So, the movie?” 

This is why Kyle never invites Stan over to his house. He won’t be able to concentrate on _anything_ for the rest of the night. “You’re such a tease.” Kyle pretends he doesn’t sound so pathetically dejected. 

After the movie they sit on the park bench next to Starks Pond and shuffle their boots back and forth in the sludge, Stan thinking his own thoughts and Kyle hoping to god that no bloated corpses float to the surface until they’re well clear of the area. 

Stan twists around to face him, one knee bent up on the seat. After a moment he says, casually, “Did you do your math homework?” Kyle can tell that wasn’t what he was actually going to say. 

“Dude, fuck math.” And Stan nods, watching his own hands intently and they flounder around in his lap. “It’s getting late,” Kyle adds, getting to his feet. “We have school tomorrow.” He almost laughs at himself, because seriously, since when did he give a shit about it being a _school night?_ It’s Stan’s hands that are doing it, unoccupied and near enough to grab hold of…but he couldn’t do that to him, not here. Kyle starts to walk away, boots sinking into the snow. He doesn’t bother to look back, to see if Stan’s following him or not. He tells himself that he doesn’t care. 

~*~

 

After school on Friday most of their class goes ice skating at Starks Pond. The weatherman was right; the cold snap has frozen the pond solid. Kenny’s always the first out onto the ice just to make sure that it’s safe. He slides right off the edge and falls flat on his face within the first five minutes. Everybody laughs, because he didn’t fall through any cracks, and Kyle grabs him by the arm and yanks him back onto his feet. 

In the middle of the pond Kyle skids to halt. Through thick layers of ice he thinks he can see a face, a pair of brilliant blue eyes staring right back at him. But he blinks, and there’s nothing really there. Stan glides up beside him, looks downward. “Can you see fish?” 

“I thought I saw Elvis,” Kyle replies, stuffing his gloved hands into his jacket pockets. Stan laughs, his breath puffing out in front of him in large white clouds. There’s a loud explosion of giggles behind them. 

Stan turns around. “Hello ladies,” he says, sickeningly suave, and Kyle rolls his eyes before twisting around to greet the girls. Wendy skates forward and slings an arm casually over Stan’s shoulder, whispering something against his ear. Stan blushes and inside of Kyle there is a definite snap. He wants to pull her hair and push her face in the mud, wants to make sure that she never touches him again. 

_Irrational,_ he thinks, and Bebe bats her eyelashes coyly at him, tucking her hair behind one ear, trying to look pretty. “Skate with me, Kyle?” she says sweetly, holding out her pink gloved hand.

“No thanks,” Kyle watches her face drop, hand snapping back to her side, “my feet hurt. But it looks like Cartman’s free.” And sure enough, there’s Eric skating carefully at the very edge of the pond, looking as though he doesn’t trust his own weight. 

Bebe nods, “Okay, that’s cool,” and starts to drift away. 

“Oh,” Wendy says, gaze following Bebe as she leaves. “I’ll talk to you later, Stan.” Her smile is a thousand watts of pure, unadulterated crush. 

Kyle’s about to say something totally mature about girl germs, and the nauseating way that Wendy won’t stop touching Stan’s arm, when there’s a loud cracking sound to their left. Kyle hears Kenny’s surprised yell and the sound of splashing water. Kenny doesn’t drown and Kyle is thankful, not because Kenny lives but because he has terrible mental pictures of pulling the wrong corpse out of the water. He shudders, pulling Kenny toward the shore and accepting a towel from Clyde. “Pneumonia,” Kenny says through chattering teeth, arms crossed over his chest and skin turning blue.

Kyle wraps the towel around his shaking shoulders as tight as he can, but he knows it’s useless. Kenny will be dead before the week ends. 

~*~

“Why do you keep having meetings with Mr. Mackey?” Kyle asks, finally, sitting on the storeroom floor. The question has been burning in his throat for days. Stan shrugs, fumbling around in his bag for his cigarettes. “Are you cracking up, Stan? Losing your mind?” 

Stan laughs, then, “We’ve all lost our minds, dude.” Kyle can’t disagree. “I don’t know, he seems to think I’m unstable.” Kyle quirks an eyebrow as Stan lights his cigarette, “Mentally.” 

“So,” Kyle says slowly, “you’re crazy?” and Stan chokes out a gust of smoke.

“Okay, yeah. I’m crazy.” Stan rolls his eyes and takes another drag. “I accidentally cut my arm when I was shaving. He saw it and thinks I’m hurting myself.”

Kyle pictures blood on Stan’s skin, pouring down the plughole. Red. Everything is red, red, red. “How the _hell’d_ you cut your arm while shaving?” 

Stan sighs, “The blade _slipped_ , okay? It was weird for me, too” 

There’s silence and Kyle can almost hear Stan’s brain willing for him to believe the story. He sniggers, “I think it’s weirder that you shave, to be honest.” 

“Fuck you,” Stan says, exhaling. Kyle can’t help but think he looks relieved. He waits, and wonders if Stan is going tell him anything more. He doesn’t, just opens his mouth and whispers, “I think Wendy likes me.” 

Kyle suddenly feels excruciatingly tired. “Well, duh. Everybody knows that.” There’s a day old cereal bar in Kyle’s bag, the wrapper glinting at him under the florescent lights. He pulls it out and takes a bite. Really, he shouldn’t have asked Stan anything, he should have skipped the speaking and gone straight for his pants.

“I don’t like her, anymore,” Stan says a few minutes later. Kyle doesn’t know how to respond to that so he just stays quiet; concentrates on his chewing and prays for the bell to ring

~*~

Kyle likens Kenny’s life to a video game: imagines him day to day with a status bar hovering suspended above his head, points taken away when he gets hurt and a point given back when he’s kind. The only thing that frustrates Kyle is that he can’t tell how many lives Kenny has left, what secrets are stashed away inside the ever illusive inventory of his mind. He catches himself sometimes wanting desperately to ask, but then, Kenny probably wouldn’t know either. He doesn’t know how the score card is marked, but each time Kenny comes back he has to loose something, or maybe there’s something gained. There’s a distance in Kenny’s eyes for a while after his return – Rebirth? Recharge? - like a part of him is still somewhere far away, floating above the clouds perhaps, or dancing on hot coals. Maybe it’s like he’s a new character every time the game restarts, or every death results in a level up. Kyle supposes at least that way Kenny would be winning. He wonders what the prize is. 

“You’re kinda like a vampire. Like, you never really die,” Kyle says around a mouthful of pasta, once again celebrating the fact that, after three whole days of waiting, Kenny is alive 

Kenny shrugs. They’ve had this conversation a zillion times before. “But I don’t suck blood.” 

“Well maybe that’s why you keep dying. Maybe you _should,_ ” Kyle waves his fork around, droplets of thick tomato pulp splattering all around his bowl. 

“Gross. Blood tastes pretty sick,” Kenny slurps, sauce making his lips shine deep red, a stray noodle leaving a wet trail on his chin. 

Kenny’s always covered in blood, always having to choke on it. Sometimes he has to wake up in it, but by that stage it’s not really blood anymore. It’s a thin red layer of dust that seeps away into the nooks and the crannies to hide. Kenny’s lost so much of it to the wind and to the cracks in the floor, Kyle wonders how there’s any left to sustain his life. Once, while Kenny laid (un)dead, Kyle dragged his finger through the dust before it disappeared, let it sink into the grooves on his fingertip. And maybe he was imagining it, but he felt different after that. Late at night in bed he thinks he can feel that tiny piece of Kenny floating around in his body 

(When he finally falls asleep he dreams that he’s drowning in a deluge of blood. Trapped like a bug inside a small, four-walled box. The level of the liquid rises until he’s sinking, looking up at the sky through a thin veil of red. There’s no sound. It’s peaceful, for a while. Then Kenny’s hand breaks the surface and pulls him up for air. “How did you find me?” Kyle gasps, stained skin of his hands grasping at the front of Kenny’s parka. Kenny tilts his head sideways, digs his fingernails into Kyle’s upper arms. His eyes narrow as he leans in close enough that his breath ghosts across Kyle’s lips, “You stole something from me, Kyle.”)

“Well,” Kyle says, running his finger around the inside edge of his bowl and sucking the leftover sauce off his finger, “If you ever decide to start with the blood sucking, I’m here for you.” He tilts back his chin, motions toward his veins like a salesman. 

Kenny just shakes his head and coughs, sending a plume of red dust into the air. 

~*~

When they were fifteen they all went camping together. Granted it wasn’t very far, they could see the town from where they pitched their tents on the mountain side, but they were sleeping outdoors and away from parents and that was all that mattered, really. 

Summer sun shone down on them creating halos on their hair, and the grass was that perfect shade of lay-on-me green. Stan made a daisy chain because he’d watched Shelly do it in their front garden the day before, stems fitting easily through the thin incisions he made with his thumbnail. No one called it gay because there wasn’t much else to do up there, and the clearing they’d picked was littered with hundreds of clumps of flowers. Kenny lay sprawled out on his back, squinting his eyes at the clouds, while Cartman hid away in the shade of the tent, eating Doritos and complaining bitterly about the heat. They talked about the girls for a while, Kenny saying that Bebe’s tits were like watermelons and Cartman laughing so hard he started choking on his chips. Stan finished his chain, eventually, just as the sun was making its way behind the ranges, and handed it to Kenny who looped the daisies round and round and made himself a necklace. 

They lit a fire and Cartman bitched about the cold, then about the dark, and then accused Kyle of being gay for having only pink marshmallows on his stick. Typical, to give him shit for that, and say nothing about Kenny having a string of flowers wrapped around his throat. They were just old enough that singing campfire songs was way lame and telling ghost stories was stupid because they’d heard them all before. The tent was large enough for all four of them, even if Cartman did take up almost half the room, and Kyle lay with his head by the door so he could see the stars until Stan told him a bear might reach through and maul him while he slept. 

He remembers it later, the way that he’d shifted back around so he faced the same way as the others, and how he’d lain on his back and watched the fabric of the ceiling ripple with the breeze and known on either side of him his friends were watching. Cartman was already asleep, snoring his deep rumbling snore. Stan had whispered “Night,” awfully close, rustling around in his sleeping bag to get comfortable, and Kenny had repeated the word in time with Kyle. Kyle had turned onto his side toward Kenny, able to see even in the dim light from the moon that he was still wearing Stan’s daisy chain, but it hadn’t felt right, having his back to Stan. He remembers it was uncomfortable; the thin material of the tent offering hardly any protection from the bumpy ground underneath them, but it was warm, sandwiched between his best friends. 

He’d woken up alone inside the tent. Outside Cartman was sniggering to himself, hand shoved inside a jumbo bag of crisps. Stan was sitting on one of the log benches, gazing upward at the largest tree bordering the clearing. “He was trying to hang a rope swing,” he’d said quietly.

Kyle had looked up and seen Kenny hanging by his neck, heard the slight crack, crack of the rope as it moved in the breeze. He’d cut the rope and Kenny had fallen into a broken heap on the ground beside the tree trunk. 

Kyle buries two different boys there, in that exact spot, just over a month apart. Thick layers of snow building up and up over the soil. In the springtime the grass will grow and patches of bright white daisies will be sprinkled in clumps around the clearing just like before. The first one goes easily, the other struggles and bruises Kyle’s skin enough that it hurts when he moves his body a certain way. By the time he’s finished with the second boy he’s certain that he’ll be able to perform the surgery on Kenny well enough. It’s a nice feeling, light enough to be mistaken for relief. 

He looks at the sky and counts all of the stars that he can see, supposing that if he still believed in God he’d probably be worried about being sent to Hell by now. “Pffft,” he says aloud, and his own voice seems to scoff back at him from the darkness. For a second it scares him, and he thinks that maybe he’s not the only one out there. But everything goes still again a moment later and he is definitely alone. Hands in his pockets and cheeks stinging from the cold, Kyle is completely, and utterly, alone.

~*~

 

Another excruciatingly dull free period in the library. Craig cuts out a row of paper dolls, somehow managing to deny a few of them limbs. The scissors are dirty, and a little bit rusty: decrepit, just like everything else in the building. He colours two of them in, one with yellow hair and one with black. Kyle knows who they’re supposed to be, and he wonders if Craig does too. It could be subconscious. Craig picks up another sheet of paper, folds it in half and starts to cut out another bunch. “Ouch, fuck.” he swears a minute later, dropping his scissors and holding his finger up to his lips. 

“You should probably wash that,” Kyle whispers, ducking his head away from the prying eyes of their two-million year old librarian. “God knows where those scissors have been.” 

Craig looks at the welling bead of blood thoughtfully. “Maybe I’ll get that disease. You know, Tennis.”

 _“Tetanus,”_ Kyle corrects, “Yeah, maybe your finger will fall off. Hey, I can save you the trouble and amputate right now.” He picks up his own pair of scissors. _“Snip, Snip.”_

There’s silence, as if Craig is _actually_ considering the offer. “Nah, I might need it later.” Kyle wonders if he’s thinking of Tweek, about curling his fingers into a fist and punching him square on the jaw. He gets up and heads toward the bathroom, leaving Kyle wishing that Cartman were at school, just so they could have an argument. About anything, really. At least it would be something to do. 

Then Stan appears, sliding into the seat next to him and saying, “Fucking Christ that was a waste of time.” Referring to English, obviously. “How was free?” 

Kyle shrugs, “Craig almost chopped his finger off.” Stan rolls his eyes and turns one of Kyle’s books toward him, reading aloud, “The head is marked by a kidney-shaped articular surface, divided by a horizontal crest into two facets for articulation with the depression formed on the bodies of two adjacent thoracic vertebræ…blah blah blah, Jesus, no wonder you always look so spaced out. Are we even studying this shit in Biology?” 

“It never hurts to be prepared,” Kyle says, (they’re studying single celled amebas) pulling the book back toward him and closing the cover with a dull thud, pointedly ignoring how bizarrely hot it is to hear Stan talk shop about a ribcage. 

“Well, whatever,” Stan says, standing up and stretching, t-shirt sliding up to reveal his stomach. “I’m starving and this place sucks.” 

From behind them comes an over exaggerated, “SHH!” Kyle sighs and Stan laughs. Lowering his voice a notch he adds, “I’ve got lasagna, I bought extra if you want it?” 

It’s almost a bribe. “I’ve got to put these books away, first.” Kyle says, slowly piling them on top of one another in front of him. 

Stan swings his backpack over his shoulder, “Okay, sure. You know where to find me.” 

As he leaves Craig wanders back through the entranceway, looking mildly perturbed. “Gollum wanted to give me a full medical exam,” he says, packing up his books, “All I asked for was a band aid.” 

Kyle laughs weakly, nodding his head and waving lamely as Craig walks away again. Younger kids begin to filter in through the doorway, the kinds of kids who are prime fodder for bullies. Kyle doesn’t know any of them and they keep their distance. They look at him sideways, though, like kids usually do. They’ve all heard the stories, and real or imagined, there’s some pretty crazy shit associated with Kyle and his friends, but no one’s going to try and challenge that by actually _talking_ to him. He thinks about lasagna, about the way Stan’s mouth will taste after they’ve eaten it. His stomach rumbles and he can hear the librarian telling off a bunch of kids nearby. The clock over the checkout desk ticks loudly. “Fuck this,” he says under his breath, slinging his bag over his shoulder and making his way quickly out through the main doors before old-faithful can make chase and nab him for not putting away his books. 

~*~

There’s a sewing kit inside Kyle’s desk drawer, hidden underneath old notebooks and birthday cards from relatives he never knew he had. The thread inside is all the same shade of soft peach. The needles are thick. There’s blood dried into the corners of the box itself, onto some of the cotton reels. He keeps it there as a reminder of how it used to be. How some nights he would find himself threading the needles and pulling it through damaged skin, trying to mend something that was beyond all hope of repair. “I can’t do this forever,” he would say against skin that was already cooling, hardening. He would have, though. If things had been different. In the pocket of his favourite jacket there’s a single thread, pulled from dead skin one night years and years ago. When he’s walking, when he’s thinking, he tangles it around the fingers of his right hand. One day the slide of it against his fingertips might remind him of why he’s here, of the reason he’s put up with the nothingness of his existence for so long. 

Kyle thinks perhaps, finally, they might all be slowing down. Their rate of tragedy and stupidity is fading out. Some days he doesn’t feel so crazy, worries that maybe it’s just him. But then he walks past someone he’s known for his whole life, an elderly lady with a sweet face who has a graveyard full of kittens in her backyard. For a moment her face is different and her eyes are clear like the fog has lifted. She looks into his eyes, and he feels it, like a gust of crisp, uncontaminated wind: that hope he used to harbour before it all got too weird. 

Kenny says, “What’s wrong?” and the blue of his eyes seems to sparkle. 

“Nothing,” Kyle replies, kicking snow into the gutter with the toe of his boot. “I just thought I remembered something, from ages ago.” 

Kenny nods, smiling, and pushes his hands deeper into his pockets. “Yeah, I do that sometimes, too.” 

~*~

Behind the bike shed Kevin sells tiny zip lock bags of weed: buds of the good shit that has Kenny leaning nearly comatose against Kyle’s shoulder by 5pm on a Monday afternoon. Kenny mumbles through the front of his parka, words spilling and swirling upside down and all around. None of it makes any sense. To the right Damien’s laughter is fractured, like someone took a hammer and cracked it right down the middle, Cheesy Poofs whizzing through the air from every angle. 

There’s steam rising from the snow and Kyle thinks, _this is it, this is it._ The devil is going to rise above the ground and take him in choke hold to make him pay for what he’s done. Stan says, “Dude, it’s just a cigarette butt,” and he’s leaning down, squinting, trying to see what’s so fascinating about it. Then they’re nose to nose, Stan’s eyes appraising, “Wow, you’re so wasted.” Kyle doesn’t even have the mental composure to reply. Kenny laughs on his behalf. 

There are blank patches in Kyle’s memory where nothing happens for ages and ages and then, there he is, sitting at Stan’s dining table shoveling spoonfuls of Mrs. Marsh’s awesome lasagna into his mouth. Stan’s laughing, “slow down, slow down, holy shit, dude, you’re gonna get sick.” But Kyle doesn’t feel ill, he feels weightless, and when he looks up Stan’s head looks weirdly disconnected from his body. Kyle can’t really feel his legs. 

Then they’re outside again, walking briskly through the neighbourhood and laughing at a joke Kyle can’t remember telling. His hands are shaking and they’re both breathing as heavy as Kyle’s body feels, sinking into the snow like there are weights tied to his legs.

He shivers when Stan finally touches his skin, palm sliding into his own, far too hot compared to the air, much too rough compared to the softness of the blurred landscape he can barely see through squinted eyes. On the elementary playground Stan says, “I think I kind of like you, now,” and Kyle wonders if he’s cracked his skull on the pavement somehow. His head is hanging off the side of the merry-go-round, the world is upside down. “Really?” he says, and as he turns he can see Stan jumping down off the monkey bars, walking toward him and sitting legs crossed next to where he is like one of those books, flip the pages and watch the pictures come to life. With each turn Stan seems closer, but he’s sitting still on the wet ground. “The stars are bright tonight,” he whispers, as if he never confessed anything at all. And maybe he hasn’t, it’s probably been pretty obvious for a while now anyway. He was just saying it out loud, what they’ve both known all along.

Kyle closes his eyes and his stomach churns violently, then he’s up off the merry-go-round and puking lasagna over the side of the playground. Stan’s laughing, “I told you you’d get sick,” and the world is spinning off its axis, the stars are falling and the ground is rushing up to meet him, cool and grassy and painfully real. 

~*~

Just outside of town there’s a lake where people throw bags of rubbish and abandon their stolen cars. The surface of the lake is serene, glistening blue and black, reflecting the moon. Close to edge, if you squint hard enough you can see the rusted arch of an SUV door a little way out, or the outline of a can half buried in the sludge that lines the shore. 

The fourth (and last) boy that Kyle kills has hair blacker than the endless night sky overhead. This one reminds him a lot of Stan. Underneath him the boy laughs nervously as Kyle pulls a syringe out of his bag. It’s over more quickly than Kyle would have liked.

He stares down at bloodied clothes and vacant eyes without a single feeling of remorse. It can’t be normal, he’s pretty certain he’s supposed to feel _something._ He sighs at the blood on his hands, the reddish brown that’s soaking into his jeans. He’ll have to burn them at the dump on Sunday. Which totally sucks, they were his favorite pair. 

They’re sheltered from view by a long row of thick trees and shrubs. No one comes out here anyway, unless they’re doing something illegal. He ties heavy weighted rubbish to the kid’s limbs when he’s finished and rolls him into the water. There’s so much junk in the lake he’s surprised that the corpse actually sinks out of view. The knife makes a gentle plopping sound as it hits the surface then vanishes, too. 

Kyle doesn’t go home but instead makes his way toward Kenny’s house. He stands outside for a while, in the middle of street. The wind is cold and he can feel his lips drying out, the blood on his skin cracking and flaking away. An unsuccessful experiment in trying to forget, that’s what it’s all been. Kenny’s house looks the same as always and his legs are moving forward before he can over think what he’s doing. 

He says, “Help me,” when Kenny opens the front door, light filtering through the broken fly screen and catching on the flecks of blood staining his clothes. Kenny looks him up and down and whispers, “oh my god, you’re _killing_ people.” Kyle wonders if he has it written on his forehead, bloodied letters carved into his flesh. He’s always had a feeling that Kenny might be psychic. People are pretty stupid, he decides, because bodies keep floating to the surface of the pond – victims that aren’t his - and there’s a book on his shelf at home called _How to Commit a Murder_ , filed next to books with detailed diagrams of the human anatomy with red sharpie circles around the prime knife entry points, but no one’s ever fucking noticed. He wonders how many other bookshelves in town are the same and figures it’s typical of South Park; it’s the residents’ job to blatantly ignore the level of fucked-up that’s rising steadily every day within the town. 

“No. Cats,” Kyle says flatly, and Kenny looks genuinely horrified. He takes Kyle’s hand and drags him upstairs. The bedroom door slams behind them and Kenny turns around, “What the fuck?” He looks confused. Kyle’s eyes feel weird. “Look at your _hands._ ” 

Kyle doesn’t, he knows what they look like: every line on his palm filled in with red. “I think I might have a problem,” he says calmly, but he isn’t thinking about the corpse in the lake or the one in the pond, or the boys lying side by side beneath the old tree where Kenny hung himself by accident that one time. He certainly isn’t thinking about the dump where charred clothing is lost underneath piles of refuse that will never be found because no one’s looking. Instead he’s imagining Kenny’s face in his hands and lips on his skin. Then he’s pushing Kenny back against his tattered checker-pattern duvet, hands fisting hard into his tangled hair, kissing him hard into the mattress. He waits for resistance, for a voice to tell him to stop. 

When he pulls back there’s enough light from the candles on the nightstand that the lust in Kenny’s eyes is burning almost as bright as his confusion. Kyle leans back down and bites into Kenny’s neck hard enough to draw blood, like he’s a vampire, like it will only leave two small red dots as evidence and not the raw and bruised outline of his entire dental plate. Kyle thinks about Jesus, only his face was replaced with Kenny’s years ago, and he prays for forgiveness that he doesn’t deserve.

It’s easy to follow through with the plan he’d forgotten he had. With fingers wrapped around Kenny’s throat he tightens his grip, narrows his eyes to slits. Kenny chokes out, “Kill me,” and his eyes are open and pleading. Kyle freezes, releases his grip on Kenny’s neck and opens his mouth to speak but no words come out. “Isn’t that what you want?” Kenny asks, sliding his hands up over Kyle’s chest, fingers circling a particularly dark blood stain, “to kill me?” 

Kyle’s vocal chords don’t seem to work, his voice is caught in his throat, pushed lower and lower by each gulping breath that he swallows down. Kenny leans up, lips glistening, hands on Kyle’s hips pulling him down. “Kill me,” he says again, the words hot and wet against Kyle’s mouth. He wonders if Kenny would ever let Stan do this, let him take away his life as if it were nothing more than a worthless trinket; expendable and easily replaced. 

Kyle repositions himself and Kenny doesn’t make a lot of noise, just a few tiny gasps, and his eyes smile before he passes out. Kyle has permission but he doesn’t even know what he’s supposed to do next. There’s another knife in his bag, abandoned by the bedroom door. Kenny has razors in his bedside drawer. The broken lamp on the table looks like it could do some damage. He leans down and presses his ear to Kenny’s chest, heartbeat thudding dully beneath the cage of his ribs. He wants to feel it between his hands, pumping out of time against his palm. Kyle’s never been so in love, so desperately and violently besotted. He traces the dip of Kenny’s breastbone with his fingertip, wonders how easily his ribs would split in half for him. He wishes Stan were there to tell him to stop.

He can hear the soft sound of snoring on the other side of the far wall; the gentle slap of Starks Pond lapping weakly against the shoreline. He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Kenny’s hand is tangled in his hair, the other resting gently against the curve of his spine. 

Kyle can’t breathe and he can’t hear anything anymore over the hurricane of his own pulse whirring in his ears. His body is heavy and he shudders as though he’s about to fall apart. Kenny speaks, Kyle can feel the vibrations against his ear, but he hasn’t got a clue what’s being said. All he knows is that something is missing and he’s mourning the loss of it, finally feeling pain in every inch of his body as Kenny runs his hands up and down over Kyle’s skin. 

~*~

School lets out early the following Thursday for Parent/Teacher meetings. They go the arcade and Cartman spends all his money playing pacman. Wendy and her gang appear out of nowhere and corner Stan beside the vending machine. Kyle’s about to interject when a hand slips into his own, gripping tightly and pulling him toward the bathrooms. Kenny’s doesn’t waste any time pushing Kyle hard against the wall and sliding his hands underneath his clothes, wedging his knee between Kyle’s thighs and pressing their mouths together. 

The bathroom door bursts open not long after, and Stan’s halfway to yelling, “Jesus Christ, Kyle, I can’t believe you abandoned me-”, when he sees them. Kyle watches over Kenny’s shoulder as Stan’s jaw practically hits the floor. The air gets tense and a blush starts to creep across Stan’s cheeks, unfocused eyes darting down nervously to where Kyle’s hands are shoved down the back of Kenny’s jeans. Kyle’s whole body throbs and it’s so obvious. He’s so selfish. Kenny swallows hard beside him.

I, um,” Stan fidgets with his sleeves, backing toward the door, “Yeah. Bye.” And he’s gone, bathroom door clicking shut behind him. 

Kenny says, “Holy crap,” and Kyle realizes that he probably has no idea about the whole little storeroom escapade he’s got going on with Stan. None of them ever really talk anymore, not about anything serious. “That was awkward,” Kenny says, leaning over one of the sinks and splashing water on his face. Kyle wonders if he’s going to have to make a decision. He doesn’t know when he talked himself into thinking Kenny would be the obvious choice, because apparently it was a lie and suddenly he feels unsteady. He looks at Kenny, then toward the door. He thinks about the body at the bottom of the lake and wonders why no one ever told him that your heart could be in two different places at once. How it could belong to somebody and you might not even know it. 

~*~

Wendy has another party and when Kyle arrives there are brightly coloured crepe paper streamers wind blown all over the road. Four shots of bourbon are already warming his blood, the dodgy premix whiskey and cola in his hand sliding easily into his belly. Esther tumbles down the front stairs and ricochets off Kyle’s arm, giggling madly as Bradley chases her down the street. Stan’s already inside, sitting on the couch and guzzling Smirnoff straight from the bottle. It’s only 9pm and he looks absolutely fucking wasted. 

Cartman staggers through the kitchen doorway, a condom wrapper peeking out of his back pocket and a large bottle of something without a label in his hand. “Kyle, my Jew. Are you drunk?” 

Kyle considers for a bit - the walls aren’t yet spinning and he can still feel his legs. He hasn’t been Jewish for years, but Cartman’s abuse is a hard habit to break. He shakes his head, “No, I’m not.” Cartman offers him the bottle and Kyle takes a cautionary sniff. It smells like meths. He swigs it and it burns all the way down to his stomach. “Fuck!” he coughs out, “Fuck, that’s not cool.” 

“Rocket fuel, Kyle,” Cartman scoffs, “I don’t expect a Jew like you to be able to handle it.” Kyle lifts the bottle and downs another two mouthfuls of it. An hour later Kyle is well and truly ripped, watching Token bounce through the living room strumming on his air guitar to the sounds pumping out through the speakers. Kyle wonders idly if maybe he’s the psychic. Stan disappears and Kenny wanders in and out of the room with a different bottle in his hand every time, sitting beside him briefly, resting a hand on his thigh. 

Past midnight Stan’s laying sprawled half on the pathway half on a large clump of plants in Wendy’s garden. He groans as Kyle walks past and makes a grab for his ankle. 

“You’re a fucking douche,” Kyle huffs, dragging him up off the ground. Stan’s breath is hot against Kyle’s neck, hands heavy on his hips as he tries to steady himself. Bebe calls out something dirty from the front porch and Kyle watches her laughing silhouette grind against the rail flanking the front steps. 

Kenny appears beside them, eyes glazed, a beer in his hand. He has blue crepe paper wrapped and knotted around his wrists. “We have to take him home,” Kyle says, propping Stan up with his shoulder, “I think he’s gonna puke.” Kenny nods and gives his drink to some kid Kyle doesn’t recognize, sitting half comatose on the silt-covered sidewalk. 

Stan protests weakly, stumbling, trying unsuccessfully to light a cigarette as they walk. Kenny does it for him, shaking his head, rolling his eyes so the streetlamps glint off the whites around his pupils. Stan takes a drag, exhales, and suddenly stops moving, jarring Kyle to a halt. “Thanks,” Stan says, a delayed reaction, and grabs the front of Kenny’s parka, pulls him forward so he can press his lips to the corner of Kenny’s mouth. Then they’re hugging and Kyle’s wide eyes lock with Kenny’s over Stan’s shoulder. 

“I thought you weren’t a fag,” Kyle says, and Stan punches him lamely on the shoulder, “that looked pretty faggy to me.” Stan mutters something irrelevant about tacos shitting ice cream and Kyle hears his own voice echo through the valley before he realizes that he’s laughing. 

Kenny hooks his arm around Stan’s waist before he falls sideways and says, “Dude, if his parents see him like this they’ll kill us.” Which is true, and Kyle doesn’t think that even Kenny could come back from death at the hands of an angry Mrs. Marsh. “My house,” Kenny blurts, dodging Stan’s AWOL cigarette. Stan’s trying to say he’s _totally okay_ and _sober enough to drive_ , even though they all know he doesn’t have a car _or_ a license. Kyle nods in agreement even though he has a feeling it’s a terrible idea. 

Kyle doesn’t feel at all in control of what he’s doing, and Stan falls against him while Kenny sifts around in his pockets for the front door key. Kyle’s fingertips brush against the newly exposed skin of Stan’s back and he can’t help but slide his hand a little higher. The front door swings open and they’re moving again, Stan a little more aware from the chilly air outside and the walk home. They maneuver the stairway without falling over. 

Stan passes out almost instantly, curled up on Kenny’s bed. Kenny throws a blanket over him, then whirls around and whispers, “What the fuck was that?” 

“How the fuck should I know?” Kyle spits back, and he’s trying desperately to ignore the hard-on he’s been suffering with since Stan planted a big wet one on Kenny’s face.

Kenny sighs, bending down to pull Stan’s shoes off. “I thought he was straight!” Kyle knows he looks suspicious, standing there with his hands in his pockets, shuffling his feet. He may as well be whistling innocently. “ _Kyle?_ ”

“We might have made out a few times,” Kyle replies, sliding down against the wall until he’s sitting on the wooden floor. He avoids looking at Kenny, trying to focus instead on the wardrobe, but it’s all a bit swirly. Definitely still drunk, then. 

The sound of Stan’s shoe hitting the floor echoes around the small room, followed by the sound of soft laughter. “You’re such a _whore_ ,” Kenny says, crawling over to where he’s sitting. And how the hell is Kyle supposed to reply to that? He’s not, really. 

Kenny really doesn’t seem phased, kneeling between his legs, palms on Kyle’s thighs and sliding higher. On the bed Stan sniffles, shifting in his sleep. “I can’t do this,” Kyle breathes, scrambling up off the floor and away from Kenny’s touch. “I have to go home.” 

He’s out on the street and very nearly hyperventilating before Kenny can stop him. He wonders suddenly if Stan’s going to be okay alone. In the end he runs as fast as he can to get back to his house, let’s himself through the front door and doesn’t care that he makes enough noise to wake up his family. His hand is inside his boxers as soon as his body hits the bed sheets, that one single kiss burned into the space behind his eyelids, replaying over and over and over until his body feels as though it’s on fire and he’s come so many times he doesn’t think he’ll be able to piss right for a week. _I think I might have a problem,_ he hears himself say. Only now, it’s so much worse. 

~*~

Christmas day is fraught with overeating and religious conflict that none of them can avoid. They exchange gifts before they’re forced to go to church and Kyle half expects Cartman to give them all a lump of coal. Instead he gives them all _Panpipe Favorites_ albums which are just as bad. “Thanks fatass, this is just what I’ve always wanted,” Stan says snidely, pocketing the disc. Cartman has the nerve to look pleased, like it’s the truth. 

The sit side by side as Priest Maxi proclaims, “There are demons among us!” and, glancing around, Kyle wonders how many times his hypocritical mouth denied Mr. Garrison the right to come to mass. Mayor McDaniel’s stands in the pulpit afterward and gives an emotional speech about love and peace and _blah, blah, blah._ She hates South Park and everyone who lives within its borders. There are tears of heartfelt joy around them and Stan turns to Kyle, sticks his finger down his throat and mimes gagging himself. They’re still laughing after the service and Kenny grabs Kyle’s arm on the front steps, leans in close and whispers in his ear, “I’ve got another gift for you, tonight.” He’s not sure if he should be excited or scared. The comic book was enough, really. 

After dinner with his family he goes to Kenny’s house just as he’d been told to. Stan’s standing by the bedroom window, fingers tracing patterns in the condensation. Kenny’s grinning like maniac, sitting on the bed. “Glad you could make it,” he says, standing. 

In a flurry of movement Kenny practically throws Stan onto the bed, then grabs Kyle by the shirt and pushes him against the wall, knocking the breath from his lungs. Kenny’s hands are as smooth as Stan’s are rough, and they’re cold against his face, holding him in place while his tongue licks at the back of Kyle’s front teeth, slides along the roof of his mouth. Kyle’s moaning before he can stop himself, and there’s a weird choking noise from the bed. Kyle thinks _fuck, fuck Stan’s throwing up,_ but he’s not, he’s just sitting there, staring open mouthed and dazed as Kenny pulls back and pushes Kyle’s jacket off, tugs his shirt up over his head. Kenny’s house doesn’t have any heating and the snow outside is building up thick on the window glass. Kyle shivers and Kenny takes his hand, pulls him toward the bed. 

Stan looks terrified, stuttering, “Guys I don’t think-” and is cut off by Kenny’s hand over his mouth, “Shut _up_ , Stan.”

Kyle isn’t sure what he’s meant to be doing, standing there shirtless while Kenny replaces his hand with his mouth, assaulting Stan thoroughly with his tongue. Stan’s hands grip white knuckled at the back of Kenny’s parka and he makes a sound, something between a whimper and moan, arches against the hand Kenny’s palming against his crotch. Kyle makes his move, clambers onto the bed and Stan leans back against him, turns his face sideways to kiss him while Kenny pulls away to take off his own clothes. 

“This is so fucked up, you guys,” Stan says, a little breathless, reaching to unfasten Kyle’s pants all the same. Kenny gets to his knees and reaches for Stan’s belt buckle. _It’s about to get worse,_ Kyle wants to say, but he stays silent, repositions himself and leans down to run his tongue along Stan’s collarbone, up over his neck, seeking out the stammering pulse behind his ear. 

Stan’s belt buckle clangs loudly as it hits the floor. They push him back onto the duvet so he’s laying supine, legs spread so Kenny can fit between them. It’s the hottest thing that Kyle has ever seen, Kenny’s face between Stan’s legs, with one hand sliding slowly up and down over his cock, wet lips shining where they’re sealed over the head. He can’t tear his eyes away and beside him Stan pants out his name, begs to be kissed. 

It happens quickly, the way that Stan loses control, thrashing his body underneath them and whimpering, arching up and trying to writhe toward them and away at the same time. “Oh my god,” he says against Kyle’s mouth, “Oh my fucking _god_.” 

And that’s the day that Kyle regains his faith, but he doesn’t tell anyone that, just wakes up to an overcast day and two warm, sleeping bodies beside him. _Heaven,_ he thinks, wrapping his arm a little tighter around Kenny’s waist, leaning back against the feel of Stan’s breath against his neck, _this must be Heaven._

~*~

Kenny’s parents disappear; his brother and his sister do, too. Kyle finds him sitting alone in the living room on some unspectacular day in February, staring at the stain on the wall where the black and white television used to be. “I woke up this morning and they were gone,” he says. There’s no note and there isn’t any money. There’s a silent house full of broken, worthless memories and a pile of dirty dishes browning by the sink. 

The bedrooms are all empty, apart from Kenny’s, of course. Closets cleared and beds stripped bare. Stan arrives not long after and they sit side by side on the threadbare couch trying to figure out where they might have gone. Kenny says he isn’t aware of any other relatives, and it wasn’t as if he was that close to his parents, anyway. His kisses taste like tears for weeks, though, and Kyle wonders why anyone would ever want to leave him. He tells Stan that they can’t ever abandon each other and they pinky swear the promise as the winter begins to melt into spring, all three of them falling asleep wrapped up in each other on Kenny’s bed. 

One night Kenny says, “Stan loves you, like, a lot more than he lets on.” Kyle listens to the shower running next door and shrugs off Kenny’s words, but he’s not sure if that’s because he thinks its bullshit, or because he _knows_ that it’s not. Kenny’s crushed between them that same night, fast asleep, and his hair tickles Kyle’s chin. He cracks open his eyes and Stan’s awake on the other side; he smiles over the pillowed distance between them, tiny crinkles at the corners of his eyes. There’s something different in Stan’s face, now. It’s been changing, and Kyle’s been watching, waiting. There’s enough room that when Stan gets up, moves to Kyle’s side of the bed, he can squeeze in beside him. “I couldn’t sleep,” he whispers, snuggling into Kyle’s shoulder as his arm automatically reaches around to pull Stan closer. Kyle wants to tell him he knows what that’s like, but Stan’s asleep before he can form anything even close to a coherent sentence. 

Kyle doesn’t kill anyone else, he doesn’t want to. There’s already enough evil in the town without him breaking the heart of another kid that no one loves. Officer Barbrady and Policeman Brown knock on the Brovfloski door a few weeks after Kenny’s parents skip town. There’s a crumpled photograph in Brown’s hand that he offers to Kyle, the dog-eared edges curled down to obscure the landscape surrounding a boy not much older than himself, hair blonde and shining in the sun captured within the frame. 

“Found him in the pond,” Brown says sternly (“What’s left of him,” Barbrady interjects, softly), “You ever seen him before?”

Kyle shakes his head, looks appropriately shocked and lost for words. “He looks so young,” he says softly, and Brown pats him on the shoulder, tells him it’s all going to be okay. Barbrady says they have no leads, and it doesn’t look like they’ll ever figure this one out. Kyle wishes them luck and they walk away convinced of his innocence. 

Upstairs in his bedroom Kenny is wrapped in the quilt Kyle’s grandmother stitched before she died, watching the police car drive away. “They’re incompetent, they’ll never catch you.” Kyle wonder’s why they’re not more worried; people are always on the verge of a breakdown in the movies. He forgets it all soon after, lost in the feel of Kenny’s hands on his skin, passing the time before Stan can get away from his family and join them. That’s the beauty of South Park, Kyle thinks when Stan walks through the door, it’s so easy to forget. 

~*~

When the spring finally comes the sun shines more often, but it’s always covered by dirty grey clouds. Head on Kenny’s thigh, watching blonde threads of hair fly out sideways into his view of the sky, Kyle says, “I wonder what it’s like out there,” past the state line, in the big wide world, in the giant empty blackness of space. He doesn’t clarify because he doesn’t really care. 

Stan snorts out a laugh, head resting on Kyle’s stomach and says, “God, Kyle, you’re so _deep_.” Kenny giggles, tugging at a tiny daisy poking out through the soil. 

“Ugh, you’re all fags,” Cartman says around a mouthful of crisps, dodging Kenny’s fist as it shoots out sideways to punch him in the arm. 

Wendy tries for Stan’s attention again and again; failing over and over to enchant him with what Bebe assures is her _captivating beauty._ Kyle tries not to notice the way in which her skin glows pale against the patches of red beneath her nostrils, the way that her eyes have lost their colour. _You’re dying,_ Kyle wants to say, _and don’t you know you won’t come back?_

Stan stops seeing Mr. Mackey at the end of June and they stay in the storeroom during lunch hour, just the three of them, knee to knee in a circle on the floor. Kyle says, “But you’re crazier now than you were three months ago?” and Kenny nods in agreement. 

Stan waves his hand dismissively and lights another cigarette. Kyle thinks maybe it’s because he hasn’t had any more slip ups with the shaving razor. There are scars, though, thin pink lines that litter his forearm and even make appearances above the curves of his hipbones. He’s never tried to hide them from Kenny or Kyle, obviously aware that there isn’t much point. He won’t say why he did it, but Kyle has a few ideas. He tries to tell himself that it’s not all his fault. It is, though, and he’ll learn to live with that, eventually. 

~*~

In late August Kenny dies. They’re at Wendy’s house celebrating the best year they can ever remember, standing shoulder to shoulder while Cartman tells them all some grand tale of bullshit about the girl he boned from the school two towns over. Kenny’s bottle of beer smashes into pieces on the floor at Kyle’s feet, then his body folds and he collapses on top of it a moment later. 

Kyle waits and he waits, but Kenny’s eyelashes never flicker with resurrected life and his skin stays cold and blue. “His heart just gave in,” says Dr. Doctor apologetically, flipping through the pages of his clipboard, “so strange.” He doesn’t even seem to realize that he’s pronounced Kenny dead a hundred times before; the name doesn’t even seem to ring a bell. They send Kyle home from the hospital after a while, telling him that loitering around the morgue isn’t going to bring his friend back. _It used to,_ Kyle thinks, sadly.

Mrs. Marsh looks relieved to see him when he stumbles up the front steps and falls against the front door of Stan’s house. “He won’t eat,” she cries, “he won’t talk.” Kyle doesn’t expect to initiate any change, and they curl up together on Stan’s bed and sleep for two days straight. Kyle wakes up with Stan sobbing against his arm and maybe, he thinks, maybe they should have written their anti-abandonment contract in blood; a pinky swear just wasn’t strong enough for all three of them. 

The funeral is on a Tuesday and the sun shines, not a cloud in the sky. Kyle can’t remember a day so perfect and he wants so badly to be angry. But there isn’t any hate left in his bones, not like there used to be. Stan says he wonders how eighteen wasted years passes for a lifetime and Kyle doesn’t understand how loving Kenny wasn’t enough to keep him alive. 

“It had to happen, sooner or later,” Stan says, as if he’s accepted it, and maybe it’s the truth, but when he speaks he sounds miserable. There’s a fog that lifts that day and Kyle wonders if it was all a dream. There’s no obituary notice in the paper and no matter how many times they search there isn’t a birth certificate on record to reassure them that Kenny really lived. 

Stan takes his hand, clutches it tightly against his own as the people of their sleepy redneck town disperse from around the grave. _Kenny McCormick,_ reads the headstone plainly, _rest in peace._ Once they’re alone, Cartman looks down at the coffin and says, “I didn’t really hate you, Kenny,” before walking away toward where his mother is waiting with the car. Stan hugs him, then, cheeks wet with fresh tears, hands gripping onto his jacket like someone might try and separate them at any moment. On the corner of the grave a crack appears, thin and dangerous, as if the stone is already beginning to decay. Clouds start to gather overhead and Kyle thinks his heart might be breaking. 

~*~

It sends an invisible shockwave through the town when Kenny doesn’t wake up, and within days of the funeral his memory begins to fade. There’s nothing worth keeping from Kenny’s empty house except for a discolored orange parka (which Stan pulls on over his t-shirt despite the heat) and a photograph of the four of them taken years earlier at Casa Bonita. Kyle draws a tiny sad face into the dust on Kenny’s windowsill, stares out over the pond until Stan tells him they should leave.

Together they rifle through the kitchen drawers that are rotten and fall apart when they try to slide them back into place. Stan finds a matchbook on top of the busted fridge with a few unused matches left inside. They take one each and set them alight, tossing them onto the living room couch. They leave the front door unlocked and cross the railroad. Surrounded by dingy shanties and junk that never made it to the dump, they take each others hand and watch the McCormick house burn.

“Where do you think he went?” Stan whispers, flames dancing in his eyes. 

“Paradise,” Kyle says simply. “Somewhere that isn’t here.” 

Stan slips his arm around Kyle’s waist, rests his head against his shoulder, “Sounds like Heaven.” 

“Yeah,” Kyle whispers, and watches the smoke drift up into the sky. 

~*~

A year after graduation Kyle becomes a teacher’s assistant and helps out at South Park High. He takes science and his students all get A’s in human anatomy. He works eight thirty to five and sometimes Stan brings him lunch; sandwiches with his favourite fillings and a hot cup of takeaway coffee. It’s normal. It’s _nice._ The students aren’t anything like the ones in their year, not as loud or as apathetic, not as numb as they had been. They haven’t seen death, not the way that Kyle has. 

Cartman packs up his stuff a few months after that and tells them all he’s going to become a zillionaire. Kyle supposes he’s just that arrogant that it might actually happen, but he doesn’t say it aloud, just watches Eric drive off toward the mountain ranges and listens to Mrs. Cartman sob as she waves goodbye to her foulmouthed bastard son like her life will be so awful without him. Wendy goes to rehab, and when she gets out she let’s Stan know that they can be together, that she’s sober and ready to settle down. Kyle wishes he’d been there to see her face when Stan told her he wasn’t really into girls. She can’t have taken it too badly, though, because she didn’t get back on the drugs. 

Stan tells Kyle that he’s in love, as if it wasn’t already apparent, and they move in together soon after. Not long after that Bebe announces that she’s pregnant, not that they hadn’t already figured it out by the huge bulge growing out the front of her body. They all know who the father is, exchanging sideways glances, although nobody says it out loud and Bebe won’t tell anyone the truth. 

Eventually Kenny becomes just an urban legend. Just that boy who people think they saw, once: he got hit by a truck and died, but came to school the next day. Kyle imagines the kids all sitting around at lunch and discussing it, wondering about the boy in the orange parka who could never, ever die. But the story is fragmented, there’s no one who can or wants to remember the details. Kyle would sooner admit that his mom is a bitch than admit to his students that Kenny was a real boy. 

“Maybe we imagined him so hard he came to life,” Stan says, and Kyle laughs because that’s a crock of shit and Stan knows it. It makes him wonder though, because Kenny could have done anything with his short life. Skipped out of class and wandered the streets, hitched a ride to Vegas and lost himself in the nightlife. Instead he stayed with them, watched as they built up the weak foundations that were going to support them for the rest of their lives. Secretly he thinks perhaps Kenny was frightened of leaving, worried that if he went too far he might never be allowed to come back. Kyle doesn’t understand the point of it at all, but he lays awake at night and his skin tingles the way it used to, the way it always has. 

Everything is different. Kyle can smell it on the crisp air that drifts in through their open window. It smells like spring and melting snow, like children who have suffered and have grown up kind-of okay despite. Sometimes though, the scent in the air is like nostalgia and it rests heavily on Kyle’s tongue with a slight coppery tang. Those nights the air is full of Kenny and what South Park might have become if he had stayed. Stan takes hold of Kyle’s hand underneath the blankets and squeezes like he knows, and he probably does, they’ve always been kind of good that way. 

He still hopes that one day Kenny will come back, bright eyed and ready to pick up where they left off. It’s foolish, but he knows that Stan thinks it sometimes too; sitting at the kitchen table in the afternoons, hair falling into his eyes as he lights a cigarette and stares blankly down at the grooves in the wood. Kenny is their secret, a part of themselves that they have lost and will always long to be reunited with.

And it’s okay, Kyle supposes, if that never happens. He’s got that part of Kenny that he stole inside of him, and sometimes when the world is still and quiet it pumps right through his heart and he feels perfectly whole. Joy washes over him and he’s never been so in love: Kenny is there again behind his lids, smiling through the furred hood of his parka and laughing at a joke that Kyle doesn’t ever remember telling. Then, a window will creak, or a car door will slam, and as fast as it’s appeared the feeling is gone. And that’s okay, too. One day Kyle will be brave enough to say it out loud, thank the ghost of the boy who took his heart and gave him chaos, instead. 

Children file into his classroom and Kyle unwraps new books, folding the bubble wrap that kept them safe into squares and sliding it inside his desk drawer just in case. He doesn’t tell Stan what he has done, what he had hoped to achieve. He dreams about it sometimes, though. Blood soaked jeans and dark red snow, bottomless holes in the ground filling up with bones and dried up strings of daisies. Cartman writes and tells them things they don’t dare believe, but Kyle’s heart skips when he reads about a blonde boy, a blur of faded tangerine that rushed past Eric on the subway. Kyle knows that Cartman would never lie about that and he wonders what would happen if they ever found Kenny again; what would happen if they didn’t. He panics and crumples the letter in his hand, considers eating it before Stan gets home and wants to reads it. He settles for setting it on fire. Kyle feels vaguely selfish for doing it, but the terror overwhelms him. He watches paper edges curling and blackening in the sink, Cartman’s words turning to ash: smoke drifting out through the kitchen window. 

And maybe he kisses Stan a little more roughly that night and his fingers dig a bit harder into his shoulders. He shuts his eyes against the guilt, against the thought that maybe Kenny woke up somewhere else entirely. That he woke up alone, without them. Stan doesn’t ask why Kyle reaches for him so urgently, why he moans against Stan’s skin desperately like he might be dying. If he did Kyle thinks he might tell him everything, might tell him about the bodies and the red sharpie circles, about the hate and all of the fear curled up inside of his belly. But Stan doesn’t ask, it’s possible he wouldn’t want to know. All they have now is each other. Stan just squints against the dark and runs his hands through Kyle’s hair, lights himself another cigarette, holding it away from himself, out through the slightly open window. He looks expectantly out over Starks Pond like he’s remembering. As if he’s waiting, waiting, waiting. 

Kyle holds his breath and counts.


End file.
